Archive for the ‘ebooks’ Category
Thursday, November 1st, 2007 |
Doing the daily rounds of my rss reader, del.ici.os, Google News and dozens of other ways I track what’s happening in my niche you really do end up understanding what’s coming and what’s going.
What I’ve noticed is that niche membership sites are becoming popular, a far cry from 5-6 years ago I can tell you that from experience. :-)
When I started looking into it I realized it’s a fast emerging trend - there are numerous software and other services out there. It’s also starting to appear in the blogging industry - there’s a post coming soon of a new membership plugin for WordPress.
There’s even a membership site on the the topic of … membership sites - MembershipSiteAdvisor
Obviously, there’s not much there for you unless you’re a member but they have this article - How to Start, Run, Promote & Profit From Your Own Membership Website.
I wonder if the free nature of the blogosphere lends itself to a membership site? Imagine if Darren Rowse and his ProBlogger site turned into a membership site. Would there be an outcry or would folks just accept it as doing business by going the exclusive route.
Wouldn’t it be a pleasure to have a site with no advertisements and no affiliates rammed down our throats - 100% pure content.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
And so I lead you onto what’s coming next.
The whole month of November will be Membership Site Month here at ePublishingDaily. Yes. That means that every post will have a membership-flavor to it.
I’m scouring the web getting together a massive amount of information on creating and running successful membership sites.
There’ll be the usual tips and hints, link outs to some top quality articles on the subjects, reviews of quite a few products and services and my own editorial spin on the issue of membership sites.
Watch this space…
Posted in ebooks | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 |
When I first started collecting items for my resource page - which I eventually called The Ultimate Resource Page … for information publishers, I never knew how much of a big hit it was going to become.
With special thanks to Darren from ProBlogger who gave it a kick along it was StumbledUpon, Del.icio.us-ed and went through a sort of (very) mini viral phase - close to 10,000 uniques visits so far.
(more…)
Posted in ebooks | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 |
More professional bloggers are looking at monetizing their blogs via information products according to a recent survey.
According to the survey, 42% of those surveyed plan to monetize their blogs by creating and marketing their own information products - a big jump from the 29% at the start of the year.
(more…)
Posted in ebooks, infoproducts, information products, prweb, survey | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 |
Liz over at Successful Blog has an interesting post discussing the collaborative effort of writing a book with her Bookcraft 2.0 series.
What intrigued me most was this paragraph, talking about titles…
This is where bloggers outshine the average off the street author. Bloggers know the value of relevant key words. They know readers search for important terms. Bloggers understand from their daily publishing that they should call a book what it is, not something clever that readers won’t understand.
And I totally agree. In the competitive marketplace that is the blogosphere attention to such detail is paramount - and nothing is more important than hooking the reader with a catchy headline.
Without realizing it those of us who write posts day-in, day-out are developing a new skill - the skill of creating that catchy headline.
Another place where you can even learn more about headlines that work is Brian Clark’s Copyblogger - which I urge all information entrepreneurs to visit and take the time to browse through the archives like I’m currently doing - it’s a real goldmine.
Posted in ebooks | 1 Comment »
Friday, November 3rd, 2006 |
Interesting post about how the affiliate route for marketing your products is becoming more important.
5 Start Affiliate Programs writing on affiliate marketing…
As the industry has matured … a large number of affiliates have become so adept at marketing that they are now larger than the brands they promote. This means affiliates are calling the shots and getting more selective about the programs they promote.
Personally, I’ve seen affiliates accounting for up to 70% of information product sales at times, which says to me that a successful information entrepreneur must utilize this marketing avenue more, developing their own list of “super” affiliates.
I also urge all budding information entrepreneurs to study the affiliate marketing industry closely - it’s not as simple as just offering 40, 50, 60% commissions. These days you have to really offer up a complete marketing package.
I’ll be delving into this topic in future posts.
Posted in ebooks | No Comments »
Thursday, October 26th, 2006 |
Yaro Starak over at his impressive blog Entrepreneurs Journey emphatically states: Paypal Must Be An Option At Your Website.
And I agree 100%. I’m a big fan of PayPal and have been for a long time. They have a strong brand with well over 100 million users and most people online (the vast majority I’m safely guessing) know the PayPal name, respect it and quite simply, trust it.
Says Yaro …
I believe no online merchant can afford not to offer Paypal. If you don’t provide a Paypal payments option you are leaving money on the table. It’s as simple as that.
One of the points he raised was that “People treat their Paypal accounts like play money.”
Your business has to accept Paypal “play money” because it psychologically reduces buying barriers.
The “play money” aspect rings true. I’ve often had and seen comments where people state they keep a small amount of money (to play around with) in their PayPal account for easy online purchases.
The fact that they feel so comfortable with PayPal is one less barrier to making that connection with a buyer - the payment isssue (ie: they don’t have to whip out their credit cards) is not on their minds.
I’ve personally noticed that this works very well on information products priced under $20.
Read the article…
Posted in PayPal, ebooks | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, October 25th, 2006 |
Increasing your conversion rates should be one of your top priorities as an information product marketer - why should you settle for 1-3% conversion when with a little bit of planning and effort a small increase can reap you big benefits.
Over at SitePoint, Kent Lewis has previously written Five Keys to Improving Web Site Conversions, which I’m pointing you to today.
He draws a bit from Robert Cialdini, a master in human buying psychology, whom I touched on with this post.
The five keys are Validation, Reciprocity, Safety, Communication and Measurement - and he goes into detail with each one.
It’s a good read for information product marketers - check it out…
Posted in ebooks | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006 |
ZDNet reports that Adobe has released a new e-book viewer and manager called Digital Editions (Beta).
Digital Editions is a 2.5MB free download that works as an add-in to Adobe’s Flash Player 9. The software can read PDF pages as well as XHTML-formatted content, which makes it suitable for both longer texts, such as books, and shorter texts, such as magazine articles. Digital publishers can combine text with Flash videos and animations.
Digital Editions is a beta release with the full version to be released early next year.
Read the Adobe press release…
Get Digital Editions (Beta) from Adobe Labs…
I’ll have more to say once I review it tonight.
Posted in adobe, digital editions, ebooks | No Comments »
Monday, October 23rd, 2006 |
Hello and welcome to another week at ePublishingDaily.
As you can see (if you’ve been here before) there are some changes going on right before your eyes. Bare with me this week as I kickstart ePubDaily into gear - I’ll be monitoring, reporting on and discussing every aspect of the information products industry for those interested in developing and running their own information publishing business.
While I’m tweaking under the hood here at ePubDaily for a few days let me start of the week with a handful of useful reads…
- Episode 7 from Tubetorial discusses copywriting.
- Michael A. Stelzner from WhitePaperSource guest writing at Successful Blog discusses how writers make more money writing whitepapers.
- Mike over at Simplenomics writes about one of the main skills of selling: opening closed minds.
- Intereting post and comments over at Entrepreneurs Journey in regards to product launches and whether they’ve become a tired formula and/or there’s too much hype.
- And finally, over at ReveNews, Heather Paulson talks about getting super affiliates to join your affiliate program.
Posted in ebooks | 4 Comments »
Saturday, October 21st, 2006 |
Bare with me over the weekend as I slap on a new coat of paint at ePublishingDaily and do some tweaking.
It’s been a quiet few weeks on the frontend (ie: what you are seeing here), but behind the scenes it’s been all go - a lot to do with my recent announcement. Well, that’s all being finalised so it’s all systems go from here…
Cheers,
Martin Neumann
Editor - ePublishingDaily
PS. I updated errr.. fixed that headline mistake.
Posted in ebooks | 1 Comment »
